


Problems Like You

by iphis17



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: Angelspit, F/F, F/M, Homophobia, PTSD, Songfic, abusive dynamics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-09-11
Updated: 2011-09-12
Packaged: 2017-11-22 20:04:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/613747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iphis17/pseuds/iphis17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The funny thing, Valkyrie? Do you know the truly amusing, amazing thing? You'll never be able to forget me, because you're one of the dreams that will die with me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Entry One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written on the eleventh day of September in the year 2011.
> 
> _Dip my tail in blood ink, write it down in red._  
>  _Scribe the words **happy meal** right across your head._  
>  \- 100%, Angelspit.

**Entry One: This Was Not My Fault.**

To be perfectly honest, it wasn't. My fault, I mean. You were asking for it.

You were all asking for it. All you perfect, flawless, fucked-up fools.

You say I've gone crazy? I'm sorry, love, but I'm not going to swallow that kind of shit. At least have the decency to make up better lies than that. Insane I may be, but I am definitely not stupid. 

No, I am not stupid at all.

So go on, you bloodsucking little parasites. Get out your leeches and your needles and your soul-stealing drugs. I'm not scared. Not any more. Look me in the eyes, and you’ll see that, as blind as you are.

Why is that, I hear you asking? I'm not who you think I am – not any longer. I've changed. I'm not just innocent, hazy, dazy little Clarabelle anymore. I'm not really sure who I am, actually, but I'm definitely not she.

You know what? That sure as Hell wasn't my fault, either, because this rapist logic isn’t mine, these are not the thoughts that should have been born of my brain, and you have always been putting words into my mouth.


	2. Entry Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written on the eleventh day of September in the year 2011.
> 
> _Tired of getting walked on, treated like a sheep?_  
>  _Don't blame me for all the years that you were asleep._  
>  \- 100%, Angelspit.

**Entry Two: This Was Also Probably Not Your Fault.**

It's okay, Valkyrie. I think I can forgive you for putting me into this place. I'm not sure what to call it, but if it wants to be amorphous, of a diaphanous, doubtful existence, then that's fine. That’s all I really want for myself, after all.

Maybe, though, I can't forgive you for erasing me, for making me into this emptiness, this hole in the fabric of the universe. I'm a dying faerie, Valkyrie. When I go, so do all of the dreams that I was so very instrumental in creating.

How was it that you could blindly follow me when I said I understood, when I said I'd been through it all before, when I actually trusted you, only to drop me in a moment when I said I liked you more than even that? Is it that creepy, being willing to kill for someone you love?

Maybe it is, but you would do it. I can see it in your eyes, as clouded as they are with worry and with lies.

The funny thing, Valkyrie? Do you know the truly amusing, amazing thing? You'll never be able to forget me, because you're one of the dreams that will die with me. I've stolen you as much as you stole me – you'll never be able to look at our fucked-up world in the same way again, and you'll never be able to look at our time together without wondering what could have been.

Even with all that, I think that I don't hold you completely responsible for this. How could one mere person be the cause of so much suffering? It's impossible. It's not all your fault.

That does not mean I'll forgive you, but that much I will acknowledge.


	3. Entry Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written on the eleventh day of September in the year 2011.
> 
> _Relax, God is in control._  
>  _Watch the dot, take your meds, obey my demands._  
>  _Trust my dog, time for surgery._  
>  \- 100%, Angelspit.

**Entry Three: These People Are Definitely At Fault For _Something_.**

You stand before me, clutching your pretty little rosary tightly in your hand, and you look at me with your wide, wide eyes, and you dare to be afraid of me. You dare to be afraid of the soul you destroyed so completely and utterly that it has no chance of ever returning to any semblance of being intact in the way it was before you came along.

You dare to fear me, even when I'm like this, wrapped up useless, wrapped up tight, separated from you by a barrier of impenetrable glass. Can you see me, or do you only see the straitjacket, the blood staining through layers of bandage, the word lunatic that's been branded over me as invisibly and surely as a witchmark?

You were never that religious before me, Valkyrie, and you sure as Hell weren't when you were with me. I find that an amusement, somehow, as I watch your fingers twitch and convulse over the beads. I'm not sure why that image is so very perfect, though, because coherence is dancing away from me. I'm starving, and unless the sadistic nurses troop in with their intravenous drips and their sugar-water soon, I'm going to pass out. Not like it'll make much of a difference. I'm barely awake as it is.

The sound has long drained away from me in this silence, and my eyes are blurring into vagueness and you look like an angel in the light, poised and posed on the edge of heaven’s boundaries, ready and waiting for your fall.

Here they are, the empty people with the white coats. Their surgical masks and the immaculacy of their clothing makes them look like the Faceless Ones themselves, empty and horrible and ready to hurt. There's a hint of sympathy in your eyes as they remove the gag from my mouth, ask me how I am. I must look too weak to pose any real threat.

I don't need your sympathy. Give me your fear, Valkyrie, give me your anger and your suffering, because I am in no position at all to deal with your pity. Not now, not ever.

I bite at the white-clothed arm nearest to me, and the gag is back on, and there's the familiar needle, and it's going into me— _Faceless Ones_ —and the world goes sedative-blurry.

Yay.


	4. Entry Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written on the eleventh day of September in the year 2011.
> 
> _Relax, God is in control._  
>  _Watch the dot, take your meds, obey my demands._  
>  _Trust my dog, shut your eyes, you're **dead**._  
>  \- 100%, Angelspit.

**Entry Four: This Guy Might Not Be Directly Responsible For My Problems, Though I Seriously Doubt It.**

When I am more awake than usual, I struggle my eyelids open, pulling at the heavy hooks of sleep that have sunk into my flesh, and am confronted by a blotch in the purity of surgical white and dried-blood-brown. This takes the form of a leering young man, colored in pasty pinks and strawlike golds and a sheen like plastic that settles over his surface.

He greets me passionlessly, his voice a monotone, and I get the vague sense that I should know who he is, that I should recognize his name beyond a twinge of a memory that could well just be a muscular spasm.

"And you can just fuck off, too," I say, in answer to his _I trust you are well_ , only I can't, because they've left the gag in my mouth, keeping me stretched open and dry.

"I'm sorry, what was that?" There is definitely emotion to him now, though it is not a good emotion on him, though it is a little better than emotionless was. It's some kind of amusement, something sick and twisted and destructive, and it shines out in his face and his voice and the jerky-twitching-excitement that quivers through his hands and limbs.

I don't like seeing him like this. Whole. It's easier to deconstruct him mentally, to tear him into little pieces of bone and gore in the arena that is my mind, the only free space left to me. I would consume his brain, and that would be the greatest contribution to society it ever made, in feeding me.

Maybe I'd get my magic back if I did that. Do you think I would? Do you think that that would return the thing they stole from me? Maybe it would. It wouldn't even go halfway to making up for all the things I've lost because of them – my virginity, for example, and any remnants of sanity I might have cherished – but it might be a start.

Shit, is he here to rape me?

… Wait, who the fuck is he again?

He must have seen the look of confusion on my face, for he is saying, with a faint smirk, that my name is Clarabelle, I am clinically deranged, and that is why I am in the Sanctuary for Lunatics. He is the doctor in charge of my case, and fuck I'm hot so he's just going to slip the bandages apart and help himself.

He accompanies his words with actions and I do not doubt for a minute that he is the one that should be locked up here, but this world has never had any sense of justice, so I merely try to stop myself from breathing. I am aware of the fact that I'll faint before I can actually die from suffocation, but it's better than nothing.

I've changed my mind, Valkyrie. I am definitely blaming you for this.


	5. Entry Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written on the twelfth day of September in the year 2011.
> 
> _Televised mass poison, spitting at the screen,_  
>  _Keep the masses deluded with fabricated dreams._  
>  \- 100%, Angelspit.

**Entry Five: So Like Apparently I'm Not The Only One The World Has Fucked Over.**

They brought a new inmate into the Asylum today. I saw them dragging her along, from my happy quiet little perch where I sat with my mouth being drained of all moisture by the fabric of the gag and my arms losing all proprioception from being strapped so tight and useless against my chest and my mind withering into a thin kind of nothingness. My eyes were sort of open, mostly shut, and it's only the fact that I can hear her sobs still that keeps me from thinking I must have imagined her. You get around to imagining a lot of things, when you have the kind of empty time we do around here.

She has amazing hair. It's beautiful, so full of colors and shape, little spikes and swirls, shades, shadows and tones. It's short, of course, like mine is, because apparently you can strangle yourself with long hair, same if your hands can’t move, but I guess it was still lovely. I can't even see mine now, haven’t in weeks, and if I could, it would probably be all dull and filthy and ugly.

She's not gagged, because she doesn't scream or bite or anything like that. She's probably a pretty good girl. I don't know. She can't be all that perfect, since she's in this place, but I’d like to think that she’s Good in some way because then I can’t be all that Bad.

The thing that just kills me, when I close my brain and let myself think, is that I'll probably never know her name, never know her reasons for being here, never know what kind of magic she had or the brand of hair dye she used or the genres of music she listened to. I’ll never know the books she fell in love with. I'll never hear about her likes and her hates and her hopes and her dreams, because I'm going to spend the rest of an eternal life in this Godsdamned hellhole.

She's still crying, and each soft, sad sound hurts me in a way that you never could have, Valkyrie, and yet I don't think I could ever hate her in quite the way I hate you. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that a surprise? If you could hear this, would you be envious of her, or would you just pity her, in the same way that you pity me? Distantly, without emotion?

I wonder if she had someone like you, in that grand, giant horrible world that we once called our home, that you probably still inhabit. Someone she loved, someone she trusted, someone who made life worth living despite everything. Someone who betrayed her, in the end, because that’s how the universe goes.

She probably didn't. She doesn't have eyes like that. She looks like someone who was screwed over through no fault of her own, someone who would have ended up in this place no matter what she did, how much she struggled. She looks like someone who would have given up long before the point of betrayal. She looks sensible, like my opposite.

You see how far you've driven me, Valkyrie? I'm trying to psychoanalyze someone with whom I'll probably never speak, someone who I don't know from Eve, because it's so much better than thinking of you, or thinking of myself. That's how much hurt you've caused me, Valkyrie darling dearest, how deeply you've twisted the knife into my heart.

Are you regretting it yet? No, of course not.


End file.
